Hauerwas, on “the churches of mainstream Christianity”

That such churches have nothing distinctive to contribute is not surprising, since their social and political power originally derived from the presumption that there was no or little essential difference between the church and the principles of the American experiment.

That may, of course, also help explain the decline of such churches, because it is by no means clear why you need to go to churchwhen such churches only reinforce what you already know from participation in a democratic society.

A Better Hope: Resources For a Church Confronting Capitalism, Democracy, and Postmodernity, pp. 25-26

This is at the heart of the frustrating, maddening, depressing thing about the life of churches. The mode of socail relationships has no higher expectation. Basically, people are left to themselves pretty much to the same extent that we are in other social structures “outside” the church. Of course, I place “outside” in quotes in order to raise the question of whether or not the relational structures of churches are on any different plane; is there a “distinctiveness” which would take precedence over the prioroties in our lives? It seems this is missing. I so I have great difficulty seeing and finding churches that have much distinctiveness in this area.